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By Robert C. Neville

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Page 14 Order is bifocal, stereoptic. It has the character of a gestalt in which the shift between figure and ground is an alternation between logical and aesthetic orderedness. That order presupposing the priority of uniformities is, practically speaking, the most important conception of order; the most relevant to the sorts of beings we conceive ourselves to be. Theoretically, it is aesthetic orderedness that demands the greater concern, for one of the primary aims of speculative philosophy must be that of testing the viability of our habitual assumptions about the sorts of beings we are and the kind of ambiance that would appropriately sustain us.

Rather, taking myself to be a metaphysician of the right age, I asked for contributions from friends and colleagues with whom I have had serious metaphysical discussions; all of the contributors know at least some of the authors besides myself. Philosophers other than these were invited to contribute to the volume but declined for one reason or another. A great many other philosophers could have been invited had space been greater. A word needs to be said about a specific lacuna in the list of contributors.

In practice, of course, moral theory promotes the viability of a relatively small selection of those beings (the male, the educated, the powerful, the wealthy, and so forth). Alternatively, theories may be developed that attempt to broaden the application of moral principles beyond the sphere of the merely human. These latter efforts, when they constitute more than conceptions of ecological noblesse oblige, are informed by at least some appreciation of aesthetic understandings of order. Metaphysics is thought to be the most general science of order.

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